The void-realm contained monsters that had eventually tired out even Vivi—if just by sheer number. She was reasonably worried about what she might find investigating ‘foreign energy sources’. Anything of special interest in this threshold-world was going to be of considerable…well, interest. Which suggested danger, and no small amount of it.

Hence she approached as carefully as she could. Her various presence-masking abilities had improved massively, along with the rest of her grimoire, thanks to the research she’d conducted while erasing what felt like half a planet of void-creatures. Still, even her most optimized spells were far from truly penetrating the material—or maybe she should say energy, since the potential there wasn’t quite the material itself—and so she couldn’t with confidence approach the target without knowing that she and, more importantly, Isabella were hidden from prying eyes.

She questioned whether she should be taking a thirteen-year-old girl into her research to begin with. But in general, Vivi believed that the safest place in the world was next to her. She was far from omnipotent, but she had yet to run into a threat she couldn’t erase from existence if she needed to. The Red Tithe had proved that much. One of the most powerful assassins wielding the most potent version of voidglass, and still, she’d been able to eradicate him on an impulse.

Most true threats to her, she knew, were informational and tangential. People she cared about being in danger, especially without her knowing. Thus, keeping Isabella at her side, even if it meant flying them into the mouth of a volcano, gave her more confidence in the girl’s wellbeing than any other option.

There were a few of the non-human, non-voidling energy sources that [Detect Presence] had picked up. Vivi flew for the one near the High King’s Palace, its positioning piquing her curiosity. Although she was worried for her and Isabella’s fate, she couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t utterly fascinated too. As she soared over the dull-gray copy of Meridian, her imagination ran wild inventing theories for what she might find.

As it turned out: a ghost.

A partially transparent human clad in full plate armor walked with long, confident strides. Like the environment, his color had been leeched out, but only partially. While not as vibrant as she or Isabella, not as real feeling to her senses, the man’s gold-and-red cape, his crown with rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, were bright and easy to make out—slightly pastel colors rather than barely tinted grays.

Vivi knew this wasn’t another human. Not a living one. [Detect Presence] had returned a strange result that, if she were allowed to personify the spell, had seemed like confusion, the magic unable to decide whether or not the ghost counted as a presence. If it was alive, it was in a nonstandard sense of the word.

Vivi floated around to get a look at the man’s face. Simply from his bearing, the square-shouldered confidence he strode with, she was unsurprised by what she found. The visage of a king met her. Handsome with a strong jaw and serious blue eyes, he radiated an aura of regality so thick Vivi almost dropped to the ground, dispelled her [Invisibility], and bowed. Not out of fear or submission, but of honest respect for a righteous leader of men, a king who deserved his crown, a virtuous monarch who upheld every expectation laid onto him and served his people as much as they served him.

The impression thrust onto her was so potent she automatically checked [Mind Fortress]. But it wasn’t a magical effect—these were her own emotions, simply inspired by viewing this man.

Or rather, not a man. She was gazing at a Concept.

Somehow, she knew what her [Inspection] would return before she sent it. It was a purely perfunctory response the System returned. An unneeded confirmation.

***

An Echo of a King Who Stood Above Kings

***

Isabella broke the silence. “That’s High King Alistair, isn’t it?” Her tone was hushed, the awe in her voice mirroring what Vivi also felt. “The Uniter. What is he

doing here?”

Vivi considered for a long moment. “No. This is just what he represents.”

“What he represents?”

“This whole city is more conceptual than real. It’s color imprinted onto a void. And this is an impression of an ideal.”

Isabella clearly didn’t understand fully. To be fair, Vivi didn’t either. She would say she was only guessing, taking a stab in the dark, but by now, she recognized that her instincts when it came to magical and otherworldly tended to be pretty reliable. Her guess was far better than most.

“He’s heading for a Voidbeast,” Isabella pointed out.

Indeed, the ghost—the Concept?—had his hand on the pommel of a great sword, and his unhurried, inevitable strides were carrying him toward the nearest prowling monster.

She wondered what would happen when the two existences met. What were these voidlings, anyway? The natural fauna of this…between-space…and clearly predatory to other life. She could tell that much. But Vivi assumed dimensional shatterings didn’t happen often, so what did voidlings eat? Each other? How were they spawned in the first place?

Maybe analyzing creatures of such alien nature was pointless.

Nearing his target, The King Who Stood Above Kings pulled a sword from his sheath with a scrape of metal on metal. He pointed the elegant, jewel-encrusted sword toward the creature and spoke three words.

“Begone, foul beast.”

The monster alerted to the presence of the King, and made to spin and sprint toward him. But the King’s attack manifested before it could so much as execute a lunge. A huge ghostly replica of his sword crashed down, slamming into the spine of the high-Titled creature and severing it in two.

The King spared a brief, disapproving look—since such a man could never look disdainful; it wouldn’t align with his ideals—before continuing his unhurried patrol around the perimeter of the Palace.

Vivi watched the man with Isabella, mulling over what she’d seen.

“They’re white blood cells,” she said in sudden realization.

“They’re…what, my lady?”

Vivi paused. She’d been surprisingly consistent with not accidentally using Earth terminology. The revelation had just struck her with such fascination that she’d blurted the words out.

“They’re defending us from the voidlings,” Vivi clarified.

She hesitated as soon as she said it. Were they, though? Comparing the wandering Concepts to an immune system implied they were protecting their world somehow. While they clearly attacked voidlings on sight, Vivi didn’t think these monsters were slipping past the boundary—she’d never seen or heard of creatures like them in Seven Cataclysms. So did killing them help in any tangible manner, if they could never breach into their world anyway?

Would something bad happen if this copy of Meridian filled up with voidlings? Was it like a termite infestation, or a virus in the world’s bloodstream? Was too many even being near their reality dangerous? Were they nibbling at the dimensional boundary?

Maybe, again, trying to analyze such foreign existences using earthly parallels was silly. She was only human, so she couldn’t help but think about things logically, but she really doubted logic held total sway on this domain. There was no cycle of life, or food chain, not in any literal manner, surely. What was, was, and there may or may not be a purpose behind any of it. The worldly hated the otherworldly, because it didn’t belong, and so these strong Concepts killed void-creatures on sight. That was the only conclusion she could draw with certainty.

“Do you think he’ll speak with us?” Vivi asked Isabella.

She was somewhat wary the king would attack if they showed themselves, but nothing so far indicated he would. They weren’t void creatures; he was of their world. So he shouldn’t be aggressive.

Still, he was strong. He’d smitten a mid-tier Voidbeast—a level 1500—without the slightest bit of strain. No level had been assigned to him when she had used [Inspect], and she wasn’t sure what that meant. Did he exist outside the System’s influence? Even so, the System could have approximated his strength, like it did for the voidlings.

Could she kill him, if she tried?

Revulsion twisted around inside her for even considering the idea. Seeing how she generally trusted her instincts, she decided that she should most definitely not attempt such a thing. She wasn’t certain which of them was stronger, but if she could kill it, she knew she shouldn’t.

She dropped her invisibility and flew down to the monarch.

“Hello,” she said, unable to come up with a better introduction.

The man’s eyes flicked to Vivi, which startled her, since she’d been expecting him to ignore her.

Though, he did. That was all she got. The man altered course so as to not collide, but otherwise pretended she didn’t exist.

Isabella let out a startled half-laugh at the complete dismissal, then seemed mortified that she’d done so, tensing and checking to see how Vivi would react. The panic in her eyes upset Vivi deeply. This girl clearly hadn’t been treated well by authority figures in her life. An understatement, obviously, but the reminder agitated her.

She floated back in front of the King Above Kings. “Are you choosing to ignore me, or is it in your nature?”

Again, she was ignored.

She tried a few more times, asking for help and explaining her situation, but the King stalwartly refused to interact. He didn’t even flick his eyes at her again; he responded by swerving to avoid her, but nothing else.

She couldn’t say she was surprised. Even what she’d gotten was more than she’d expected.

“Interesting,” Vivi told Isabella after the brief experiments. “But I’m really not sure this is materially relevant to our situation.”

Her primary goal was finding a way to escape safely, and her secondary goal was studying void-creatures, to better kill and defend against them. The sword-summoning skill had been effective, but hadn’t been magical in origin…it had used some other energy source that she couldn’t make heads or tails of. Energy that reminded her of System-granted skills. Obfuscated, or simply of a fundamentally different nature than magic as she knew it.

“Let’s go take a look at the other Concepts, but I don’t think they’re what we should focus on right now.”

Flying across the city—having to vaporize a few voidbeasts who saw through her invisibility along the way—Vivi found another Concept.

This one was in the market district. She was a street urchin of a girl, shoulders hunched forward, eyes shifting left and right as she cleared each alleyway. An aura of twitchiness, of a harried fugitive, wreathed her. Her hair was dark and short, cut ragged as if by a knife. Filthy rags covered her body.

***

An Echo of One Who Was Trodden Underfoot

***

As with the King, Vivi couldn’t help the visceral reaction that washed over her. It was gut-deep and not magical in origin, merely her own response to seeing the idea so thickly on display. It was an image all men and women understood, even if they had never experienced it themselves. And unlike a righteous leader of men, the Concept wasn’t a pleasant one.

Sometimes the world turned its back on you. Why not do the same? The only person she could trust was herself.

Vivi shook her head, then pulled away. Even if she could talk to this Concept, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

After a moment, Vivi told Isabella, “Let’s find a different one.”

The third ghost was a young man poking through the shelves of the Institute. Vivi hadn’t felt him with [Detect Presence] earlier, which meant these strange existences were ephemeral—flickering in and out.

***

An Echo of an Ambitious Student

***

The Concept was weaker than the other ones; she could feel that the moment she put her gaze on him. He provoked neither inspiring nor harrowing feelings like the previous. After pushing off the waves of sympathetic emotion that flooded her looking into those bright but bag-ridden eyes, Vivi tried speaking with him. She failed. Like the King, he didn’t react to a word she said, and attempting to physically block him only had him swerving off his path.

She was tempted to touch him, to force some sort of reaction more than a glance of acknowledgment, but she feared that would provoke retaliation. And she didn’t want to fight one of these Concepts. Not necessarily because she thought she might lose—the King had felt the most powerful, and even him she hadn’t felt instinctual fear of—but because doing so simply felt wrong.

Like cutting off her own hand. Yes, she could, if she wanted to; it would be easy. She would need to be deranged, though, to do so without extremely good reason. Reason more than just ‘I wonder what would happen’.

So she guessed she’d learned as much as she could. She knew she was getting sidetracked anyway.

Teleporting Isabella up into the sky, she floated above Meridian.

“We should head for Prismarche,” Vivi said. “It might take a while, and I don’t want to delay.”

Saffra was waiting for her, worried whether her friend, Isabella, was alive. And probably worried for Vivi too. Maybe justifiably, since jumping through a dimensional breach was a threat on the scale of even the Sorceress.

“Before we go, are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired? I have potions and food, if you need anything.”

Isabella seemed bewildered by the questions. As if there were something strange about being checked on. Almost as much as wanting to return for Saffra’s sake, Vivi wanted back in Meridian so she could smash Duke Caldimore’s face in with her staff.

Though she knew she would have to moderate herself. She’d been granted too much power to abuse it frivolously. It was such a slippery slope, simply doing whatever she wanted. She’d far from stopped fearing exactly what she was capable of, however much she welcomed and savored her vast abilities too.

“I’m—fine, Lady Vivisari,” Isabella replied almost nervously, before the emotion was replaced by a furrowing of her brow. “I’m not sure if I can get hungry. I don’t feel…much of anything, not like that, now that you mention it.” She looked at her hands curiously, turning them back and forth, as if she would find something.

Vivi wrinkled her nose. She felt the same. Another piece of evidence that this trip between worlds was likely less physical than it seemed. Governed by very amorphous magical concepts more than anything.

Not wanting Isabella to dwell on that—and not wanting to herself—she said, “Let’s get going, then. With luck, it won’t take long.”